THE SCENE IS a familiar one. The sprawl of urbanism creeping into the surrounding suburbs evidenced by strip malls flanked with gas stations. On and on they go, obliterated only by the edge of the horizon.

It can make you feel so small.

Elissa Eubanks/Staff (ENLARGE)
D Morgan is a refreshing change in Cartersville with dishes like duck confit with Swiss chard and garlic mashed potatoes.
Elissa Eubanks/Staff (ENLARGE)
Mixed greens (above) are transformed with help of fried calamari and ginger dressing, and lemon poppy seed cake (below) gets a boost from a topping of banana ice cream.
Elissa Eubanks/Staff (ENLARGE)
Elissa Eubanks/Staff (ENLARGE)
Chef-owner Derek Morgan opened his cosmopolitan restaurant in his hometown after working for years at tony spots out West.
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But look beyond, and often there is a Main Street USA refurbished. A tiny microcosm of gentility planted just beyond the fray.

Cartersville's Main Street has become such a spot, its old-fashioned storefronts filled with boutiques and other businesses.

And a cosmopolitan little restaurant called D Morgan's. After eating here, I wondered most why chef-owner Derek Morgan would open a restaurant of this caliber — white tablecloths, Schott Zwiesel stemware, organic ingredients — in downtown Cartersville.

The answer is simple: Morgan is from Cartersville. While working at a few tony spots out West, (most notably the Royal Palms Resort and Spa in Phoenix), he schemed to get back to Georgia.

The restaurant is a labor of love between him and his family— his father helped to renovate the former furniture building, his sister and brother-in-law both work for him. His fiancée, Meredith Walton, is his pastry chef.

His restaurant is a welcome respite to the unyielding din of sameness two blocks away on Highway 41. Hard pine floors, fresh flowers, linens and a sophisticated menu of globally inspired dishes make it so.

He uses high quality ingredients, hires a professional (albeit unorthodox, and I'll get to that later) wait staff and cooks in an unusually large kitchen. The wine list isn't deep, but amid typical Cabs and Chardonnays are varietals that pair nicely with what comes from the kitchen.

And while what comes from the kitchen may not wow you, it rarely disappoints. Morgan has a deft hand and a good palate, pairing a succulent duck confit with a fine display of mashed potatoes and perfectly seasoned and sautéed Swiss chard and a few mushrooms. His style is not manipulated, but it is refined and shows off his smarts.

In place of labor-intensive preparation and presentation, he relies on the methods of his classical training (he is a 1996 graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta) and serves his food on fine china, his wine in fine glasses.

He marries pork tenderloin with cabbage, seasoned stoutly with red wine that is reminiscent of the flavor of sauerbraten, offering a dark, sweet apple glaze for balancing sweetness. A similar dish of beef tenderloin uses the same facilitation, just with different ingredients — more of the hardy garlic mashed potatoes with a demi glace laced with tarragon (the forgotten herb) and spotted with meaty fava beans.

A salad of simple mixed greens is nothing special until Morgan adds crisply fried calamari and a splash of ginger dressing that smacks of mirin, sesame, ginger and soy. The best part of a blue crab cake, though feathery with fresh crab, is a well-executed beurre blanc brimming with creamy orange flavor.

Walton's desserts are lovely to look at but don't always deliver in substance. A tiny tower of lemon poppy seed cake with sautéed bananas has little flavor other than that of the splendid banana ice cream with which it is crowned. The heady spice of chai panna cotta is just plain weird. Simple is better: Walton's warm apple crisp with a buttery streusel dotted with almonds comes up a gooey, warming winner.

And so does this can-do restaurant, even with a waitress who calls patrons "my lord" or "milady." (Which, while at first was intensely off-putting, ended up adding another dimension to the already pleasant surprise of the overall experience.)

Planted with coffee and a crunchy biscotti on a banquette at the end of a meal, I no longer feel small. D Morgan's has given me a delicious point of reference within the framework of neverending highway just beyond its doors.